Artifact of the Month: April 2024

Play Ball!

With little flat land available, baseball was first played here on the tide flats at the mouth of Ketchikan Creek. Playing in a tidal zone had unique challenges. The ballfield shrunk or expanded depending on the tide and no matter how long the field dried out, there was always mud and obstacles from the debris that had floated in on the last tide. A ball batted into water too deep to retrieve was declared a home run. Balls hit deep into right field ended up within the lumber of the sawmill (roughly where Salmon Landing is today) and were ruled doubles.

By the early 1920s, a dedicated space for a new ballpark was developed further up Ketchikan Creek in a growing part of town known as Nickeyville, near where the present-day junction of Park Avenue and Schoenbar. The dirt field was named Walker Field after Norman "Doc" Walker, a pharmacist and drug store owner, Ketchikan Mayor, and Territorial Senator. Over the decades the field became a community gathering spot and was used for a variety of sports and community events like the Fourth of July timber carnivals. The original grandstands seen in the historic photograph were built around 1921. They were replaced after a fire destroyed them in the 1950s.

In 2021, voters approved a bond to pay for improvements to recreation facilities around the Borough, including a new reoriented field with a turf surface. In preparation for the renovation, the grandstands were demolished in August 2023. While some saw it as the end of an era, others seized the opportunity to make commemorative art. Brian Elliot, a local artist and lifelong baseball fan, repurposed wood from the grandstands into commemorative plaques. The front side was planed and features a painted stencil design that Brian created while the back side remains an original section of a seat. The plaques were sold as a fundraiser with all proceeds going to help rebuild the Joseph T. Craig American Legion Post 3, which was destroyed by a fire in 2023.


Object ID #: THS 70.2.5.62 and TC 1162

Photo Caption: Grandstands in Nickeyville, which would later become Park Avenue. Photograph attributed to David Nicoll, circa 1922.

Artifact Caption: Commemorative wooden plaque made by Brian Elliot.